February 4, 2011

[A]ctivists from Stigamot, the rape crisis center in Reykjavik, gave Knut Storberget, Norwegian justice minister, black boxer-briefs with the words I Am Responsible written down the crotch....

Feminism, or at least the notion of gender equality, has so infused politics that, a couple of years ago, women members of Parliament performed The Vagina Monologues....

There are also new feminine spaces in the economy. As the economy went into overdrive, Kristín Pétursdóttir and Halla Tomasdóttir, who had been warning of disaster from her position at the Chamber of Commerce, founded Auður Capital, a “financial service company emphasizing feminine values and social responsibility.”...

Interestingly Iceland's male to female ratio is 1:1 and the birth rate is only marginally less than ours. Obviously a lot of Icelandic feminists are doing the ole horizontal mambo under cover, so to speak.

The country also has a slit right down the middle from which new land erupts in a fertile fury of regenerative procreation! The island reached the fifth stage of psycho-sexual development before humans even arrived. Very feminine. Very Iceland.

I would want to know, bullshit rhetoric aside, which sex in Iceland works the most hours for pay and which sex in Iceland actually spends more of the money. Which sex, exclusive of childbirth expenses, gets the most health care? Which sex lives longer? Which sex completes suicide more often? But which sex gets more treatment for depression? Which sex suffers more from violence? Which sex complains more?

There is something so perfectly girly and whining about female politicos giving a man a pair of boxer shorts withe words "I am responsible" on them--because that is what many women really feel--that men in fact are responsible for them, and they better pay for dinner and hold the door and act like the poor little woman is the victim.

I would want to know, bullshit rhetoric aside, which sex in Iceland works the most hours for pay and which sex in Iceland actually spends more of the money. Which sex, exclusive of childbirth expenses, gets the most health care? Which sex lives longer? Which sex completes suicide more often? But which sex gets more treatment for depression? Which sex suffers more from violence? Which sex complains more?

Really? Why do you want to know?

The place is an ice cold hell.

The only thing I want to know about Iceland is how to stay the hell away from it.

There is an old Icelandic legend that says that the first women to set foot on Iceland were kidnapped by Vikings from villages along the coast of Ireland. (Apparently women from Scandinavia refused to go there.) The legend continues that on the voyage to Iceland the Irish women threatened to jump overboard unless their captors agreed to a long list of demands.

The Vikings conceded and this maybe the end result of that ancient agreement.

I got to the point in the article where The Nation tries to pretend that Iceland's financial collapse was due to too many men running hedge funds and Milton Friedman's economics. And then I decided to quite while I hadn't yet hurled.

Women in Iceland make 65% as much as men? As that because they're all majoring in psychology and subjects that end in the word "studies," vice engineering and science?

Eve Online is an MMO that was designed and run from Iceland by a nearly all-Iclandic crew (yes, a few women here and there). When the game launched in 2004 and through 2006 or so, they were using bandwidth through a pipeline that went back through Great Britain before linking to the worldwide internet. Around 2006 they were using a full third of the small nation's entire internet capacity and had to move the server cluster to London. Currently, they are in the top 50 worldwide for private company server capacity. I'm not sure where they stack up for pure computing power, but it's hefty.

In fairness, the part with with the statutory rape of the minor has generally been excised from modern productions of the The Vagina Monologues.

Of course, the fact that the author didn't see the problem with it in the first place doesn't do her much credit. And I have trouble believing that everyone entranced by the play wouldn't be just as entranced if the rape scene was still there.

Interestingly enough,Iceland is darker but no colder than Northern Georgia in the 6 month winters. The Gulf Stream keeps the winter highs in the upper 30s and the lows in the upper 20s. My guess is that there is nothing to do during the long winters except screw and the women's lust outlasts the available men until the women are in charge or at least independent. Strangers sojourning in Iceland ( especially USAF )have often reported that the Icelandic women were freely available sexually with their husband's or father's consent.

As to details, I was 14, she had grey eyes, really, really white skin, and was a competitive swimmer. Her hair was half way down her back, a bit whispy, and bleached white by the chlorine. She had a full build for a swimmer. I kissed her once, and touched the side of her breast. She giggled.

I don't know how you can complain about a pay gap where the top two male jobs are hedge fund manager and fisherman. One job involves handling millions of...whatever the Icelandic currency is, and the other is a job that is likely to kill you.

Icelandic women are just reaping the ill-gained benefits of a sex monopsony. It's impossible for lowly-educated foreign women to become Icelandic citizens, as one of the primary requirements for citizenship is being able to speak, read and write Icelandic.

You know this was a post that was just waiting for Shouty to show up and complain about.

I like when he poked his fat head into lefarkins' site a couple days ago, only to have it batted around by commenters who had apparently stumbled onto his own drivel. You know, weird stuff like this:

"Especially, I stare at the young Chinese and Filipino women. In my mind, I’m still the dashing young man Myrna loved. An incredibly beautiful woman loved me! I almost have to restrain myself from screaming at pretty Asian girls."

Ick.

Despite his borderline pedophile leanings (with an Asian fetish thrown in), we should indulge Shouty by branding him enough of a ladies' man to opine intelligently on the topic. Let's give him a warm thanks for providing his rather, er, unique (if somewhat weird and creepy) perspective.

"Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, Iceland’s president from 1980 to 1996, the first democratically elected woman head of state in the world."Who does the Nation think Indira Ghandi and Golda Meir were? Potted plants

We are talking of the first piece of the domino in the european crisis?And the land of the Vikings. And the first europeans to born and die in America. And kill canadian natives. BTW: the adventure ended when the two sisters of Eirick The Red made their husband kill the brother of Eirick

Americans are always taking Scandinavian culture out of context and screaming all these things about it in order to force changes in American society, but if you actually live in a Scandinavian culture you realize how little the articles bear any relationship to actuality. Sure, there's a Lutheran ethos there, and it has morphed in odd new ways, showing that the Lutheran ethos is still the avant-garde, but when you actually live in these places as I lived five years in Finland, and then read about Finland through the eyes of a journalist who spent a weekend in Helsinki, or a day in Oslo, you just roll your eyes. It's very cold in those country, and they don't have much to do. If you're a foreigner in one of those countries, you realize you'd better not step outside after dark.

Golda Meir, Dame Margaret Thatcher and Indira Ghandi were all heads of GOVERNMENT.

The head of STATE of Israel is the largely-ceremonial President. The head of state of the United Kingdom and of India is of course Her Majesty Elizabeth II, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas Queen, Defender of the Faith, Duchess of Edinburgh, Countess of Merioneth, Baroness Greenwich, Duke of Lancaster, Lord of Mann, Duke of Normandy, Sovereign of the Most Honourable Order of the Garter, Sovereign of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath, Sovereign of the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle, Sovereign of the Most Illustrious Order of Saint Patrick, Sovereign of the Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George, Sovereign of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, Sovereign of the Distinguished Service Order, Sovereign of the Imperial Service Order, Sovereign of the Most Exalted Order of the Star of India, Sovereign of the Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire, Sovereign of the Order of British India, Sovereign of the Indian Order of Merit, Sovereign of the Order of Burma, Sovereign of the Royal Order of Victoria and Albert, Sovereign of the Royal Family Order of King Edward VII, Sovereign of the Order of Merit, Sovereign of the Order of the Companions of Honour, Sovereign of the Royal Victorian Order, Sovereign of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem.

Ritmo, your fascination with Thomas's libido is what's creepy. Especially after your former fixation on my testicles. A man's thoughts in these areas should not be looked at directly, and never discussed along with feminism. Creepy is as creepy does.

I only quoted the guy, Bag. Better yet, I quoted another person (woman?) who quoted him. And who found him creepy.

It's not a sign of fixation to be struck by someone's habits of staring and screaming at much younger interests of sexual(?) desire, or to be struck by your willingness to donate a dick part or two for the cause of fighting terrorism. You should seriously consider that these behaviors and preferences are what stand out as odd or at least unusual, not my pointing that out. (And only after, in Shouty's case, someone else pointed that out for him).

I know none of us is perfect and we're all entitled to our peccadilloes. But Shouty obviously pushes those quirks to the point of what many would consider either disturbed or otherwise reproachable.

There was a great article about Iceland in Vanity Fair a few years ago called "Wall Street on the Tundra." Basically the fishermen became hedgefund managers and bankrupted the country. Iceland was its own financial bubble. The author observed about gender politics that he had not been in any Western country where men and women interacted so little.

the other great article about Iceland is John McPhee's in his book "The Control of Nature."

I don't always agree with Thomas, but young girls (of legal age of course)? That's a no brainer. Nothing more beautiful in the world. And the appreciation increases with age. When I was actually young enough to be touching them, I had no idea how lucky I was. If I did I would have dated more, and fell in love less.

I think the appreciation of such beauty is one of the few places where male and feminine values agree completely. Of course, it's best that no woman with power over you ever knows exactly what you are thinking on this matter.

If that's true, it's something older women in neither country will admit to - and regardless of which side of the "feminism" debate they call home.

Luckily for me, I'm still way inside the bounds of the "pre-menopausal" set. Once I'm Shouty's age (but not as poor or as ugly as he is) then I will let you know if the insecure bobbleheadedness of a twenty-something is that much more enticing to me than someone at least as fertile, more realistic, more sexual and more appreciative of intelligence and other true virtues than merely the appearance thereof.

Poor Shouty will never understand the importance of that last part. But then, it gives him one less thing to lament. It's the one thing he can lack without knowing what he's missing.

Your wife is a different topic from your extrapolation of your fascination with her to generic younger women.

As far as cruelty goes, you should try acting more respectfully to others and see where that gets you. Apparently your wife would have. If you're so in awe of her, why do you have so much trouble acting in a way that you believe she would have done and encouraged?

Oh, right. The awe is the important thing, not the ability, or even a meager attempt, to learn from it.

That's the point I made earlier, how can you compare pay rates between men and women, when most men in that country go into dangerous, but potentially, highly profitable fishing? Are Icelandic women working as diamond pickers on the rims of the volcanoes?

Their entire economy revolves around fishing. (The banking thing was just a fluke. There was a great article about it in VF: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/04/iceland200904 which appears to be part of a book.)

scoured lists of municipal salaries to assess wage gaps and found that men’s higher wages were a result of overtime and miscellaneous extra payments. The worst offenders were approached and told they could no longer earn these extras because of the city’s family policy. Two men quit, but wages were equalized.

Without OT, how do you get the snowplow drivers to work 16 hours straight when you have a blizzard?

I had a volunteer statement in for Iceland when I was single and in the Air Force. I didn't get to go because almost no one who was there wanted to come back. The women there were reputed to be hot, beautiful, and forward.

Iceland has never mattered nor will it ever matter. Its closest approach to historical relevance was geographical, being a rock in the North Atlantic from which Allied and the NATO aircraft could patrol the oceans looking for submarines.

Otherwise their island is a source of giant volcanic eruptions. Probably the largest global impact Iceland will ever have is as a source of atmospheric ash.

They could be the most racist, misogynistic culture on the planet and it would be pretty much the same to anyone else.

I don't wish them ill, from all accounts they are nice people, I just don't think it matters a damn what happens on Iceland.